Install packages fails in Windows 11

[enoches]

The function pkg_install() is not working. This has been happening since the R version 4.* on my notebook with Windows 11.

For exemple:

pak::pkg_install("gt")
#> 
#> ✔ Updated metadata database: 5.30 MB in 4 files.
#> 
#> ℹ Updating metadata database
#> ✔ Updating metadata database ... done
#> 
#> Error: ! error in pak subprocess
#> Caused by error in `readRDS(dbfile)`:
#> ! formato de entrada desconhecido

^{Created on 2025-05-17 with reprex v2.1.1}

Session info

sessionInfo()
#> R version 4.5.0 (2025-04-11 ucrt)
#> Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64
#> Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 26100)
#> 
#> Matrix products: default
#>   LAPACK version 3.12.1
#> 
#> locale:
#> [1] LC_COLLATE=Portuguese_Brazil.utf8  LC_CTYPE=Portuguese_Brazil.utf8   
#> [3] LC_MONETARY=Portuguese_Brazil.utf8 LC_NUMERIC=C                      
#> [5] LC_TIME=Portuguese_Brazil.utf8    
#> 
#> time zone: America/Bahia
#> tzcode source: internal
#> 
#> attached base packages:
#> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     
#> 
#> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
#>  [1] digest_0.6.37     fastmap_1.2.0     xfun_0.52         glue_1.8.0       
#>  [5] knitr_1.50        htmltools_0.5.8.1 rmarkdown_2.29    lifecycle_1.0.4  
#>  [9] cli_3.6.5         pak_0.8.0.2       reprex_2.1.1      withr_3.0.2      
#> [13] compiler_4.5.0    tools_4.5.0       evaluate_1.0.3    yaml_2.3.10      
#> [17] rlang_1.1.6       fs_1.6.6

[gaborcsardi]

pak::pkg_install("gt")
#>
#> ✔ Updated metadata database: 5.30 MB in 4 files.
#>
#> ℹ Updating metadata database
#> ✔ Updating metadata database ... done
#>
#> Error: ! error in pak subprocess
#> Caused by error in readRDS(dbfile):
#> ! formato de entrada desconhecido

Is this all the output you get? There is no stack trace? If not, then can you run it without reprex and show the stack trace?

This is possibly a bug in pak. I guess it happens when pak is reading the cache files, and you can work around it with deleting the cache

pak::pak_cleanup()

[enoches]

Is this all the output you get? There is no stack trace? If not, then can you run it without reprex and show the stack trace?

> pak::pkg_install("gt")
✔ Loading metadata database ... done
Error:  118  deps for  1/1  pkgs [⠹] Resolving standard (CRAN…
! error in pak subprocess
Caused by error in `readRDS(dbfile)`:
! formato de entrada desconhecido
Type .Last.error to see the more details.
> .Last.error
<callr_error/rlib_error_3_0/rlib_error/error>
Error: 
! error in pak subprocess
Caused by error in `readRDS(dbfile)`:
! formato de entrada desconhecido
---
Backtrace:
1. pak::pkg_install("gt")
2. pak:::remote(function(...) get("pkg_install_make_plan", asName…
3. err$throw(res$error)
---
Subprocess backtrace:
 1. base::withCallingHandlers(cli_message = function(msg) { …
 2. get("pkg_install_make_plan", asNamespace("pak"))(...)
 3. prop$solve()
 4. private$plan$solve(policy = private$policy)
 5. pkgdepends:::pkgplan_solve(self, private, match.arg(policy))
 6. self$resolve()
 7. pkgdepends:::pkgplan_resolve(self, private)
 8. pkgdepends:::synchronise(self$async_resolve())
 9. asNamespace("pkgcache")$synchronise(...)
10. base::stop(priv$value)
11. global (function (e) …
> 

This is possibly a bug in pak. I guess it happens when pak is reading the cache files, and you can work around it with deleting the cache

pak::pak_cleanup()

@gaborcsardi Thanks for your help. I tried pak_cleanup(), pak::cache_clean(), and pak::cache_delete(), but all of them gave me the same error. Then I also uninstalled and reinstalled the package, but it didn’t work either.

[gaborcsardi]

Try to delete the cache manually, it should be at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\R\cache\R\pkgcache.

[enoches]

Try to delete the cache manually, it should be at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\R\cache\R\pkgcache.

The process has now been executed successfully. I closed both R and RStudio, removed the folder's contents, reopened RStudio, and... there it is!